So, uh...what's good in Gaza?
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Can someone tell me wtf is going on? I understand they want to rescue this guy, but this does not look good.
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the story is a whole lot deeper than the rescue of the 19 year old solider, you are talking about a country whose ruling party doesn't recognize the country of their hostage on top of that They are bent on the destruction of said unrecognized country.
It seems like the Palestinians are trying to use this one man as a bargaining chip in hopes of freeing hundred of jailed members of Hamas
totally fair and balanced
Don't get me wrong the whole thing is just crazy, where are the goverments willing to help out all i see is the Egyptian goverment trying the diplomatic route, our UK goverment isn't doing squat or the US, or have i got it wrong? it's a situation just being left to get more out of hand.
So you hate Jews, Arabs, and yourself? Just tryin' to keep score here.
The fact that they tunneled into Israel and kidnapped dude is only one reason for this mess.
More importantly, the Palestinians have been firing missles from Gaza (sovereign Palestinian territory) into sovereign Israeli cities. The Hamas-led Palestinian government has been at best indifferent/unwilling to try to stop this, and at worst actively complicit/has encouraged/applauded this activity.
Ask yourself: WWAOCITWD? ( What Would Any Other Country In the World Do? )
Blame the Jews?
oh come on now only most of Europe, the Middle East, major parts of Africa, most of Southern USA hates Jews, dude Japan and Iceland totally dig Jews
ghana loves israel too
Currently Palestine is attacking Israel... Viciously.
Israel is trying to work out a diplomatic exchange with Palestine. Palestine does not recognize the Israeli government. Palestine refuses to negotiate with Israel directly or through Egypt.
Now can I be your friend?
It's tragic that the whole population of Gaza has to suffer now just because of those extremist assholes. The guys who attacked the Israeli checkpoint knew how Israel would respond to this. Now they try to use the kidnapped soldier as a bargain to free their terrorist friends, although they know that the Israelis don't negotiate with terrorist scum. I just read that the palestinian interior minister has ordered the security forces to fight this 'cowardly zionist aggression'. Yeah, fight the Israeli army with your AK's and become martyrers!!!
When Bush came into office he had 3 things shaping his opinion vis a vis this situation: 1) He didn't want to do anything Clinton had done, 2) He thought the conflict was too deep seated and couldn't be solved, 3) He thought the Israelis using force would solve things in the end.
Because of these ideas Bush basically withdrew from the diplomatic process that had been built up by the former Clinton administration and gave its full support to the Sharon government on the DL. This at a time where you had a fracturing of Israeli (Labor is powerless, and Sharon ended up breaking away from the Likud) and Palestinian (Arafat died like Bush had hoped, but left a power vacuum that still exists, Fatah is full of old corrupt officials, while the "streets" were moving more and more towards radicalism, i.e. Hamas) politics at the same time.
Which brings us to the current situation where Hamas won the Palestinian elections, doesn't want to negotiate, is being cut off from many donors, can't pay its bills or public services, is allowing rockets to be fired into Israel and other various terrorist acts, while the Israelis are unilaterally withdrawing behind their wall and left Gaza with no negotiations, and guess what happened, a bunch of Palestinians started using it as a base to attack Israel! And the Bush administration continues to sit on the sidelines doing nothing.
i hate bush & his administration as much as the next person but blaming the "israeli-palestinian situation" on him or any other country for not playing big brother is fucking ridiculous.
i wish it was that simple...
Who is pushing the two sides to even talk to each other? No one.
Seriously and pragmatically speaking, Motown...
...exactly what is there to be done?
The closest this thing EVER came to a resolution was when Clinton tried to broker the Oslo peace accord.
90+% of ALL ORIGINAL Palestinian land would have gone back to them along with their own government.
Most rational people in this world understand that was THE best deal the Palestinians were EVER likely to see.
And Arafat turned it down.
After that, I've become clearly convinced that the PLO, Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah and yes, the majority of Palestinians do NOT want peace with Israel.
They want a world WITHOUT Israel.
Period.
Exactly what can ANYBODY do in that situation?
I mean seriously, if Arafat turned that down, what makes you think an even more radical government run by Hamas - who refuses to even RECOGNIZE Israel - would do any different?
And don't forget, these mo-mo's were voted into power BY the Palestinian people.
It was THEIR will that Hamas would lead them.
That should tell you something.
And you say BUSH is to blame here??!
You got jokes.
Clinton got played by Arabfat, wasn't he at the whitehouse more than any other foreign "leader". He convinced the Israelis to give in and Arabfat stabbed them in the back. You're need to blame everything on Bush is just further evidence of your derangement.
how is calling Arafat an Arab an insult?
I'm not saying Bush's "road map" has been productive either but laying this all at his feet seems excessive.
I do disagree with Paul's contention that the election of Hamas to lead the Palestinian gov't suddenly invalidates any legitimate grievances they may have. That's like saying the election of Bush is an all-encompassing mandate of a specific ideology. Think of it another way: choosing between Fatah and Hamas is sort of a losing proposition either way with the weakness and corruption of the former and the nihilism of the latter - in the end, I think Hamas offered a literal "guns and butter" appeal for a society fed up with the ineffectiveness of Fatah, even before Arafat's death.
Btw, regarding the failure of the 2000 Camp David talks...there's a good amount of analysis that challenges the belief that Arafat was solely to blame. Check out "The Truth about Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process" by Clayton E. Swisher. http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol12/0503_csbkr.asp
Not to mention completely irrelevant.
Well for one thing, that wasn't my contention at all.
My contention was to simply point out the futility of the situation as it stands now.
Again, Hamas makes Arafat look like Ghandi in terms of any diplomatic willingness.
(read: Arafat arguably had some. Hamas? Forget it.)
And since his death, the Palestinian people, by voting Hamas into power, have made it abundantly clear that they're NOT interested in peace with Israel.
Which leads to...
I might have agreed with you if the Palestinain people simply refused to show up to the polls on election day.
But that certainly wasn't the case.
They came out in DROVES.
And that sent a clear message as far as I'm concerned.
Again, I'm NOT saying that somehow "invalidates any legitimate grievance they may have"...
... I'm saying that simply tells me they're just not interested in peace with Israel.
For one thing, I would have to imagine that the Palestinians would be obligated to, at the very least, recognize Israel first before we could even begin to talk about peace.
I believe putting Hamas into power dashed any such hopes more than any single action in the entire history of this 50+ year conflict.
A clear message of what though? I don't think anyone can boil down a decision to vote for Hamas candidates as simply reflecting a desire to see Israeli annihilated. I'm not saying people turned a blind eye to it either but I think Hamas ran on a platform that was a little more advanced than "Death to the Zionists!"
Dude, we're NOT talking about Republicans or Democrats here.
(hell, we're not even talking about Libertarians or Greens!)
We're talking about the armed wing of an extremist religious sect who have a long and storied history of murdering innocents.
And yes, "Death to the Zionists!" has always been at the center of their ideology.
And considering that Hamas wasn't even a political party in the most basic sense until this last election campaign, then no, I don't think it's crazy to assume that many a Palestinian's decision to cast that vote was based out of a desire to see Israel annihilated.
I really don't.
I wonder if you'd be as forgiving to let's say, a southern US state that voted in the KKK or Neo Nazis to run their Senate, state government, etc., on the grounds that they had a "better platform" than the other guys who were just really, really corrupt, so they had to go.
Is it not a little bit paternalistic to downplay the intolerant, violent nature of the party chosen by the majority of the Palestinian people in order to make the outcome of the election seem more tolerable/palatable? Why do we conceal the true nature of Hamas (extremist, intolerant, racist) in order to rationalize the outcome of the election?
I mean, if corruption were truly the only reason for Hamas' support (as opposed to its violent acts against Israel, etc.), ask yourself why a less corrupt moderate and/or secular alternative has not emerged from the Palestinian political landscape. Why should we ignore the intolerant, radical Islamist nature of Hamas just because they happen also to have a clean record on corruption? If a slate of skinheads swept to power in West Virginia on a platform of good governance, would we give the voters that supported the party the benefit of the doubt? Not likely.
But the main aspect of Hamas' ideology that I feel needs to be laid bare is its unwillingness to compromise. While there are racist references to Jews in the Hamas charter, the most striking aspect of the charter from my perspective is its categorical rejection of negotiations as a means of resolving the conflict. Peep it, the charter is unequivocal on this point: negotiations are useless and armed struggle is the only way to end the conflict. The charter goes so far as to condemn those states -- namely Egypt -- that have concluded peace treaties with Israel. According to the charter, these countries have exited the "Circle of Struggle" that Hamas insists every Arab country must be a part of.
This is extremely regressive. If Palestinians truly seek change, I can't see how a group opposed in principle to negotiations will bring it.
Yeah, everyone's got their own account of this event: Shlomo Ben-Ami, Clinton, Ross, Rob Malley. It's hard to get ahold of accurate maps because they weren't officially printed. The proposals that the Israelis made became a political liability for them following Arafat's rejection.
Ben-Ami's interview with Ha'aretz is good though.
And FMEP purports to have some accurate projections of the final proposals.
What is clear is that Arafat's team produced no counter-offer whatsoever, and that the violence that followed was planned at a high level to pop off soon after the talks failed (Sharon's Temple Mount visit was provocative to be sure; but don't beleive the hype).
To put things into perspective, Barak returned from Camp David/Taba without a peace deal, and as a result was politically dead in the water. He didn't even have a majority in Parliament anymore. He was done.
Arafat, on the other hand, came back to a ticker tape parade in Gaza, thousands of Palestinians cheering for his "brave" refusal to make peace.
Uh, I think a slightly more apt example would be asking why it is that so many Zimbabwe people have supported Mugabe over the years despite the fact that his cronyism and corruption have bankrupted the country and fucked over many of the same poor people his party was supposed to be champions for. Or why the IRA enjoyed populist support for so many years despite being an unabashed terrorist organization.
I'm not defending Hamas. I think voting them into power was a huge set-back to the peace process. But I think it's more than just anti-Zionist hatred that factored in here. Even the AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE thinks that Hamas' coming to power was not just a result of anti-Fatah weariness but also lack of U.S. intervention and disinterest by Sharon to make any meaningful inroads with Abbas (I find their analysis a little skewed but not in the direction I would have thought). If you prefer the "liberal media" spin, then hey, there's always the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020400226.html
Go back and re-read my post. I'm talking about the last 6 years[/b], not the last couple weeks. So in your opinion everything is just inevitable or something? Things have just gone to crap and nothing can be done?
I went over a series of issues that have happened to all 3 parties, the Israelis, the Palestinians and the U.S. Let's go over a couple of these issues.
1) The U.S. had spent a lot of time, money, etc. to become an arbiter in the dispute, and when Bush came into power the U.S. completely walked away from any negotiations. Has that worked?
2) Bush thought that if Arafat was gone, things would change since he was the one that vetoed the Oslo accords. Arafat died, things any better? There's been a vacuum in Palestinian leadership since then. Fatah is a bunch of old corrupt dudes that are loosing support amongst the young, and Hamas, which also provides social services to many, has gained momentum. Has that worked out?
3) Israel, feeling like they didn't have anyone to negotiate with, unilterally withdrew from Gaza. Did that work out?
I can keep on going on with a list of events.
My point was that in the last 6 years there were other possible outcomes. The U.S. chose to step away from negotiations, and let Israel do whatever they wanted, and basically the Palestinians the same thing. To me, things are worse now, then better.
agreed to a point, even tho it's tempting to blame Bush for everything, i don't think they banked on Hamas getting in and having so much support, which was a result of the afgan / iraq situation to a small degree because it was an excuse to recruit more terrorists, i think they hoped the fall of the corrupt PLO goverment would force somekind of stable democracy, all that happened was a balance to the hardline israeli goverment.
It is similar now to how the IRA were in Ireland it's now getting to the point where it's more about power and money than somekind of struggle to indepenance which i think is what ordinary people everywhere in the area want, and it's mixed up in criminal gangs and a whole bunch a factions...its just getting too complicated, for me anyway.
Sorry Oliver, but there's just no comparison there. None.
I would hope you'd agree that Hamas is a hell of a lot scarier an outfit than Mugabe or the IRA (and not for nothing, but I have sympathy for neither peoples of either countries who would support such a regime or institution - so what're you telling me?).
For one thing, neither of those examples share the sort of ultra-religious fanaticism inherent in Hamas (Catholicism aside, those northern Micks were never as fanatical as these fucks).
Hamas is on a level with the nazis in more ways than one (and I don't make that comparison lightly).
They certainly share the same ideology / philosophy re: their "solution" to the Jewish problem.
And nothing Oliver, excuses any human being with a heart and a conscience to vote for that.
So please, stop making fucking excuses for these people.
There are none.
Such as what??
And more to the point - exactly how much of a factor are you trying to say it played?
And even if that's the case, does that excuse the Palestinian people for voting in such monsters?
So, roughly, by what percentage of the Palestinian voters would you estimate voted with absolutely no malice towards Israel?
I await your answer with baited breath.
My reasons for believing that the majority of Palestinians voted out of pure hatred towards Israel more than any other underlying factor is simple... history.
And other than having the nasty habit of repeating itself, history doesn't lie.
Its pretty deplorable that people here would defend hamas. There really is no way around calling them a hate group.
I also find it weird that the debate seems to fall along US political party affiliations. Must every political discussion, no matter what the country or situation, become a dem v. rep?
Oliver, to borrow a quote you borrowed once
only a sith thinks in absolutes